A boy and his bokken

Evan has begun studying Aikido, and while he’s only a white belt and will not begin the study of bokken for some years to come, he has apparently seen some people doing a kata with a bokken, and he dreams of achieving that level of mastery. He demonstrated for me with a shovel handle in his back yard, waving it about, slinging it around his body (twice knocking himself in the head with it, and then laughing). 

As he began to tire, he leaned on his stick and told me, “If I could be a bird, I’d be a phoenix. I would rise from the fire and be fiercer than an eagle. I’d be made of fire, and nobody could ever catch me.”

I asked him how he knows about the phoenix.

“Books.”

Update on the local election, for those who might be interested. JoAnn garnered 43% of the votes (still being counted, final tally due by Friday). Her two main opponents (from 9 who ran) are running neck and neck. If she had 51%, she'd have been re-elected outright, but because she had less than that, she'll have to run against one of the two men--so we have another six months of this to get through. If you add together the two men, you get 45% who voted against her, so we have some heavy communicating to do before November if she's going to make it. I'm adding an Extra from last night: press conference on the sidewalk about 9:30 p.m. You can see that she was mobbed by the media, one small Black woman and a scrum of aggressive white people, each competing with the other for her attention.